The attack on Canadian non-profits, and why we have to respond

We teach our children not to bully. That’s much harder when the federal Conservative party embraces bullying at every opportunity. Consider their most recent attacks on non-profits -specifically environmental organizations.

The government is using the Canada Revenue Agency for political reasons – threatening specific organizations that the federal Conservative party does not like, for political reasons.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has lumped legitimate Canadian charities in with terrorist organizations. This is untrue. Unfair. And damaging to these non-profits. And I believe it's something that the public needs to protest in the strongest way.

By publicly identifying and throwing suspicion on seven non-profits that are active around environmental issues, the federal government is trying to silence all other organizations that work on these issues. And in fact, silence any non-profit that advocates for social change.

If the federal government gets away with this type of narrow-minded intimidation, we'll soon see similar attacks on activist food banks, mental health organizations, development disability non-profits, etc.

As you can imagine, audits are incredibly expensive and disruptive to non-profits. It's a form of harassment. It is simply bullying.

The CRA audits distract an organization from their mission, and costs them an incredible amount of money and time having to deal with the audits. This of course also wastes donor dollars.

I believe a core role of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) is to support and defend their members when necessary. Many AFP members are represented in these targeted organizations, and work for many other non-profits that our federal government dislikes.

Ultimately, this is the State using their unlimited resources to attack non-profits that disagree with the policies of their federal Conservative government.

I urge the AFP to defend our membership and respond to this campaign vigorously.